BHSV–Seanan McGuire Guest Blogs + SIGNED Book Giveaway!

 

Summer Rain in California: Making the Familiar Frightening.

California summers are supposed to be magical confections of sunlight and flowers and flirty floral-print dresses and men with surfboards whooping their prayers to the Gods of the Sun.

This is not that summer.

As I write this, my part of California is in the middle of an unseasonable storm system.  Rain pours down outside my window, and has been pouring down for the better part of a week.  Gardens are drowning.  Flowerbeds are being washed away.  And all the poor tourists who bought their tickets to a summer of fun in the sun are standing under awnings and in doorways, staring in shell-shocked horror at the water that is falling from the sky. It doesn't matter if they come from places where the inclement weather is a hell of a lot worse than it is here; this is California rain, and California rain in June reads, to many, as a sign of the apocalypse.  What would be familiar at home is terrifying here, because it's not supposed to happen here.

Urban fantasy is the genre of California rain.  It's the genre of taking familiar things, things that would be about as frightening as my Maine Coon kitten (who is, admittedly, terrifying when he runs the Kitty 500 around the house at 3:00 AM), and somehow making them scary, or strange, or unbelievable.  Urban fantasy is the genre of perfectly dressed porcelain dolls sitting in the middle of evergreen forests, of haunted houses in the middle of suburban developments, of a single leather-bound book on a small child's candy-colored bookshelves.  It's all about the out-of-place making the normal abnormal; it's all about defining a whole new normal. This normal has teeth.

Summers like this make me realize just how easy it is to take reality and tilt it a little bit out of true.  Every time I look out the window, I'm uneasy.  This is California; this is June.  Everything I am tells me this rain is impossible.  And because of that, I'm primed to fall into a modern-day fairy tale.  If I saw fairies in my hedge, it would still get a "No way..." response, but maybe not as strong of one as it would have gotten before the rain started coming down.  I've already accepted one impossible thing.  What's one more between friends?

Horror works the same angles a lot of the time; it just takes it further. In horror, the doll in the forest has teeth.  Maybe she has teeth in urban fantasy, too, but she's probably not venomous, or if she is, you probably won't melt.  It's all about the frightening in the familiar.  It's all about that strange and impossible, outside-your-window, scaring the tourists, California summer rain.

Be sure to carry an umbrella if you're planning on going outside.

-- Seanan McGuire

Win a SIGNED Copy of “Late Eclipses”

 

To Enter:

Comment on anything on this post...

Fill Out THIS Form!

Extra Entries in The Comments WILL NOT COUNT!

US ONLY!

*please read my Contest policy*

Extra Entries:

• +50 Write a Blog Post about the event


• +25 Add the event button to your blog {Grab the Button HERE}


• +10 Google Friend Connect Follower {Follow Publicly}


• +10 Networked Blogs Follower


• +10 Subscribe to The Blog by Email {Form near the top of the Right Sidebar}


• +7 Follow me on Twitter {@larissa_sarah}

• +5 “Like” Larissa's Life on Facebook
  
  


• +5 Be my friend on Goodreads
  
  


• +1 For spreading the word {+1 per link - Twitter, Facebook, etc – Please add links to the Form of the Giveaway you are entering}
  
  


• +1 Add all your entries! {including this one!}

Don’t Forget to Vote for the Theme for

My TOP 5 Sundays Post on the Poll at the left sidebar!

Check Out The OTHER BHSV GIVEAWAYS:

 

Check Out My Design Blog:

Great Anti-Piracy Badge Up for Grabs!

*Great Freebies Available!

&

Sign Up for…

Thanks so much for tuning in and I’ll see you soon!

xoxo,